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Should we drop the notion of “subject”?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 June 2016

André Martinet
André Martinet*
Affiliation:
Sorbonne
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Extract

The title of this paper should by no means be interpreted as a recommendation diplomatically couched in the form of a question. As I write it, I am wondering whether or not we could achieve more clarity in our exchanges among linguists if we decided to judge on its own merits each one of the cases where we are used to operating, or tempted to operate, with the notion of subject, and if we tried to devise new and less ambiguous labelings for every specific complex of syntactic criteria. Yet, considering the difficulty of reaching agreement among all scholars concerned, would we not, thereby, increase the existing confusion rather than reduce it?

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 17 , Issue 2-3 , 1972 , pp. 175 - 179
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Linguistic Association 1972

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References

1 In “The Case for Case,” Bach, and Harms, , Universals in Linguistic Theory, New York, 1968, 1–88.Google Scholar

2 Cf. Martinet, A., “Cases or Functions?,” in Studies in Functional Syntax, Munich, 1972 Google Scholar, or its French version “Cas ou fonctions?” in La linguistique 8, 1972.1, 5ff.